NetApp ONTAP MCP — Desktop Extension

Installs NetApp's official open-source ONTAP-MCP server as a Claude Desktop extension, so Claude can query and manage your ONTAP storage clusters directly.

Why this exists

ONTAP-MCP ships only as a Docker container speaking Streamable HTTP — it has no stdio mode. Claude Desktop's custom connector feature requires a server reachable from the public internet, which a server sitting in front of your storage cluster usually isn't and shouldn't be. Desktop Extensions solve both problems: this extension runs entirely on your own machine and talks to Claude Desktop over stdio, exactly like any other local extension.

Under the hood, server/index.js:

Writes an ontap.yaml config file (from your settings below) to ~/.ontap-mcp-desktop-extension/.
Starts the ghcr.io/netapp/ontap-mcp Docker container, published only to 127.0.0.1 on your machine — never exposed to your network or the internet.
Waits for it to report healthy, then bridges Claude Desktop's stdio connection to that local HTTP server using mcp-remote (bundled — no internet access needed at runtime for this part).

Requirements

Docker Desktop (or another Docker engine) installed and running on your machine.
Network connectivity from your machine to your ONTAP cluster's management LIF.
ONTAP admin credentials.

Settings

Setting	Notes
ONTAP Cluster Address	Hostname or IP of the cluster's management LIF
ONTAP Username / Password	Password is stored by Claude Desktop and written only to a local file, mounted read-only into the container
Skip TLS Certificate Verification	On by default — most on-prem clusters use self-signed certs
Read-Only Mode	On by default. No provisioning/deletion tools are registered until you turn this off
Docker Image	Defaults to `ghcr.io/netapp/ontap-mcp:latest`
Local Port	Host port the container is published on (127.0.0.1 only); change if 8083 is taken
Additional Clusters (advanced)	Raw YAML to add more `Pollers` entries for multi-cluster setups

Security notes

ONTAP-MCP has no built-in authentication of its own unless you separately configure OAuth (not covered by this extension) — anything that can reach the assistant using this extension can use these tools. The container's port is bound to 127.0.0.1 only, so nothing on your network can reach it directly.
Read-Only Mode is on by default specifically because of the above — turn it off only when you intend for Claude to make changes to your storage systems.

Troubleshooting

Logs (including all Docker container output) are written to:

~/.ontap-mcp-desktop-extension/container.log

If the extension fails to start, check that file first — most issues are either "Docker isn't running" or "the configured port is already in use."

Building this bundle yourself

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/mcpb
cd ontap-mcp-extension
npm install --production   # bundles mcp-remote into node_modules/
mcpb pack . ontap-mcp.mcpb